page_title: Beverley
section_title: Civil war and Restoration recovery
hierarchical_section_title: Beverley / History / Civil war and Restoration recovery
caption_attribution_description: English: Beverley Minster, Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire, England.Royal Coat of Arms. These are the arms of King Charles II.
context_page_description: Beverley is a historic market town and civil parish, and the county town of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The town is known for Beverley Minster, Beverley Westwood, North Bar and Beverley Racecourse. It inspired the naming of the city of Beverly, Massachusetts, which in turn was the impetus for Beverly Hills, California.
  The town was originally known as Inderawuda and was founded around 700 AD by Saint John of Beverley during the time of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria. After a period of Viking control, it passed to the Cerdic dynasty, a period during which it gained prominence in terms of religious importance in Great Britain. It continued to grow especially under the Normans when its trading industry was first established. A place of pilgrimage throughout the Middle Ages due to its founder, it eventually became a significant wool-trading town. Beverley was once the tenth-largest town in England, as well as one of the richest, because of its wool and the pilgrims who came to venerate its founding saint, John of Beverley. After the Reformation, the stature of Beverley was much reduced.
context_section_description: In the early 17th century Beverley was affected by the plague which caused many deaths. Due to the close geographical proximity to Hull, focus on the area became magnified when the people of Hull refused to open the gates to Charles I a couple of months before the fighting began in the English Civil War. After being turned away from Hull, the king spent three weeks as a guest in a house at North Bar in Beverley, where he was openly greeted with the ringing of St Mary's Church bells. Beverley was initially royalist: however, it was taken by the parliamentarians of Hull, forcing the king to flee. A royalist army led by William Cavendish defeated Thomas Fairfax to reclaim the town for the royalists; from here they launched another Siege of Hull.  Eventually the parliamentarians won the civil war and established the Commonwealth of England, in which alehouses were shut on Sundays and theatres and race meetings abandoned: the Puritans visited the then Church of England houses of worship and destroyed anything they thought to be idolatrous.
  Beverley Minster managed to escape this fate, in part due to the prominence of the Percy family and the fact that the church housed memorials to their ancestors. Beverley's Quakers were not so fortunate, and were strongly repressed by the Puritans. The English Restoration with Charles II coming to power was generally well received in Beverley, and his royal coat of arms was hung in the Minster and remains there. In terms of trade Beverley was not rich in the 17th century but had improved slightly, the majority were based in agriculture.  During the Georgian era, Beverley was the county town of the East Riding of Yorkshire and became the prime market town in the area during the 18th century; competition from Pocklington, Howden and Market Weighton was insufficient. The replacing of old timber buildings with new ones in the Georgian style helped the town recover in prestige, with the religious structures also undergoing restorations. During the Industrial Revolution, Beverley's people retained most agricultural jobs, though there was a presence of iron workers within the town.
  Beverley had a cattle market for 1300 years, it served as the centre for the region's livestock trade until it closed. The site is now the car park for Tesco supermarket which opened in 2002.
caption: Charles II's arms hanging in Beverley Minster
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